Qualcomm to demo 'Ultra Sound Notepad' tech at CES 2014

The stylus never died, no matter what any CEO tried to tell us. In fact, they have continued to improve and new ideas and technology are pushing them to the spotlight in ways we never would have imagined a few years ago. Like Qualcomm's new Ultra Sound Notepad tech.

I'm a big fan of integrated and active stylus support on phones and tablets. Use a Samsung Note 3 or an Nvidia Tegra Note with their supplied styli, and you'll quickly see what I mean. It's almost like writing or drawing on real paper. Qualcomm goes a step (or two) further, and you actually draw or write on paper and have it sent directly to your Snapdragon-equipped device in real time.

They're using tiny ultrasonic microphones in the device, which pick up the vibrations transmitted from the supplied pen as you're writing or drawing on actual paper. The Snapdragon processor can then parse this data and transform it into digitized content right on the screen, where it can be manipulated. It's pretty amazing, as the video above shows us.

The use-case for this is potentially huge. Imagine filling out paperwork at the office, and instead of scanning it upon completion to get it into a spreadsheet or other document, it does it on the fly. Or for artists, the feedback from actually working with ink and paper can be retained, but the end result is also stored right on your phone or tablet.

We've no word on when we'll see any of this in the wild, but Qualcomm will be demonstrating this and more at CES next week. Stay tuned, because we're there to bring it all to you as it happens.